Project Manager / Product Owner II

Our Client, a Financial company, is looking for a Project Manager / Product Owner II for their Jersey City, NJ location.

Responsibilities:

• Backlog Ownership & Story Definition
• Own and manage the product backlog, ensuring it is well-groomed, prioritized, and always sprint-ready.
• Using AI tools, translate product requirements and roadmap priorities received from the Product Manager into clearly defined epics, features, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Collaborate with engineering to refine stories, resolve ambiguity, and ensure requirements are technically actionable before planning.
• Maintain traceability between backlog items, business objectives, and delivery milestones.
• Support Product Managers in maintaining product roadmaps in Jira Product Discovery, ensuring alignment between discovery and delivery, and enabling clear visibility into priorities and progress.
• Delivery Coordination & Project Execution
• Lead day-to-day delivery execution across one or more Agile teams, facilitating planning, standups, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Maintain and update implementation roadmaps and delivery timelines in Jira, ensuring accuracy, data hygiene, and reliable progress reporting.
• Identify, track, and resolve blockers, dependencies, and risks that could impact delivery commitments.
• Partner with Development Managers and tech leads to coordinate releases, manage capacity, and sequence work effectively.
• Ensure responsible adoption of AI-enabled tools and workflows across the SDLC by applying appropriate governance, validation, human oversight, and adherence to enterprise standards for quality, privacy, security, and ethical AI use
• Maintain and optimize implementation roadmaps in Jira, ensuring data accuracy, traceability, and alignment with delivery goals. Proactively implement automation rules and data hygiene practices to improve consistency, reduce manual overhead, and enable reliable reporting.
• Leverage AI, Jira, and BI tools to enable data-driven decision-making by building and maintaining dashboards, reports, and insights on delivery performance, risks, and outcomes.
• Apply AI and automation tools within the SDLC to improve team efficiency, reduce manual overhead, and support smarter delivery decisions.
• Support Development Managers and Technical Leads in engineering operations by tracking and improving key metrics (e.g., DORA), maintaining up-to-date application registries, and ensuring visibility into system ownership and health.
• Team Enablement & Collaboration
• Skilled in coordination and change management, with experience running workshops, leading continuous improvement, and promoting new work methods.
• Help teams adopt new ways of working in an evolving AI-driven SDLC by integrating AI-assisted practices into backlog management, delivery execution, reporting, and continuous improvement, while reinforcing effective operating rhythms and collaboration models.
• Act as the primary day-to-day point of contact for the engineering team on product questions, requirement clarifications, and priority decisions.
• Shield the team from context-switching and ambiguity by ensuring work is clearly defined before it enters a sprint.
• Facilitate team ceremonies and working sessions to maintain focus, momentum, and a healthy team dynamic.
• Stakeholder Communication & Reporting
• Provide regular, transparent updates on progress, delivery health, risks, and blockers to the Product Manager and relevant stakeholders.
• Build and maintain Jira dashboards and delivery reports to give real-time visibility into team performance and delivery status.
• Escalate issues and trade-off decisions to the Product Manager in a timely and structured manner, with clear context and options.
• Continuous Improvement & Agile Practice
• Champion strong Agile practices within the team, supporting consistent delivery rhythms and continuous improvement.
• Monitor team velocity, quality metrics, and delivery patterns to identify improvement opportunities.
• Support adoption of new tools, processes, and AI-enabled workflows as the SDLC evolves.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 5-7 years of experience in project management, product ownership, or Agile delivery roles within software product development environments.
• Proven experience as a Product Owner or equivalent role, with strong backlog management and story-writing skills.
• Deep knowledge of Agile practices (Scrum, Kanban), sprint ceremonies, SDLC, and release management.
• Hands-on experience with Jira, including backlog management, sprint tracking, automation rules, and delivery reporting.
• Strong ability to write clear, well-defined user stories and acceptance criteria that engineering teams can act on confidently.
• Experience working directly with engineering teams as a day-to-day delivery partner.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to clearly convey priorities and requirements to technical teams.
• Ability to manage competing priorities, resolve ambiguity, and keep teams focused under delivery pressure.
• Preferred
• Experience working in AI-enabled, highly automated, or digital transformation environments.
• Familiarity with Jira Product Discovery or similar tools to support alignment between discovery and delivery.
• Experience with DevOps, CI/CD, and quality engineering practices.
• Understanding of engineering metrics (e.g., DORA) to support delivery health tracking.
• Familiarity with BI tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, Looker) for delivery performance reporting.
• CSPO, SAFe PO/PM, PMI-ACP, or related Agile certifications.

Why Should You Apply?

• Health Benefits
• Referral Program
• Excellent growth and advancement opportunities